Despair does not produce a faster pace | Clip from Sanctification

Conversion Is the Beginning of the Christian Life

Another thing about the sermon that really is encouraging is that he points out that Barnabas says these things to new believers, again, not necessarily physically young. And it's good to remember that conversion is not the end.

OK, once a person embraces Christ and you could say, well, they are in the kingdom now. They are, but that's not the end of the Christian life. And that's not all we care about. You know, there's a whole they've opened the gate.

They've walked into the new kingdom. They've been transferred from a kingdom of darkness to light. They can never go back to the kingdom of darkness, but it's just the beginning. So if we leave them there, we're departing from the New Testament pattern.

Barnabas didn't see them and say, great, you're in the kingdom. And it proves that God loves the Gentiles as well. And all that God promised is coming to pass. He exhorts them. Now you need to cling to the Lord daily.

You know, and it also helps us to realize that baby Christians, new Christians, can handle strong words. And those words, you know, the timing of those words is pretty significant.

Grace, Good Works, and Fresh Supplies for Perseverance

Chandler, he's addressing new believers, as we've said, said, I desire to teach you the necessity of abounding in good works and how you might perform them in an evangelical manner. So not to earn salvation, but because you have been saved.

With a view to God's glory, the love of Christ constraining you, I'm concerned to show you from where you are to derive fresh supplies of grace for your final perseverance, as well as how to derive comfort and peace when laboring under a humble sense of your corruptions and shortcomings, or when buffeted by Satan, or when under any other kind of affliction.

And so, you know, this is a battle. And there's a journey ahead of you. Here's how to be prepared for it.

A lot of wisdom. Yeah, and we talked about before the show, how any godly counsel that can be given and embraced in the earliest days of the journey, that, in a sense, we could say that counsel has the potential to be more valuable than any counsel that follows.

In a sense, because if it can affect the entire journey, you think of a person who's... So, you know, I became a Christian at 20. And things that were said to me by the person that led me to the Lord at 20, in some way, have affected every day since then.

So now it's been 32 years. Now, if someone comes and talks to me tomorrow, and the things they say are very beneficial, they only have the potential to affect the next however many years I have left, you know?

So, early counsel, so helpful to set, like you said, to set with biblical realism and kind of truth that puts steel in your soul, to set them on the right path from the beginning. Yeah, and he mentions that if we misunderstand the nature of grace and kind of let the new convert think that grace can be used as an argument for not pursuing good works, he warns against that lie.

He says it this way, to argue from the free, immutable grace of God to a life of rebellion against God is to argue more like devils than men. So, never think that salvation by grace alone through faith alone, that the logical outcome of that would be that we live for ourselves, you know?

Promises and Duties in Perseverance

Another thing he hits is he talks about the balance in perseverance between two great elements in the New Testament, in particular, between the promises that God will enable us to endure and he will not lose one of his children, and the duties that we must cling to the end.

So, Chuck, when you see both of those, how do you see those working together and why is it important to hold both?

Yeah, so the promises that Christ has made to us hold before us hope and a destination. The duty I think of is kind of putting the boundaries on the pathway. Here's the way to go. I was thinking about this earlier today.

We recently went on vacation with my children and traveling with them is always a journey in itself. It makes you want to stay home. But how much worse would it be if there's no destination known? So we go load up and we're going to be driving for hours, kids.

Where are we going? Ah, we're just driving. So there's, in a sense, duty. There's a journey, but there's no destination. It's drudgery. It's just mile after mile of boredom and tedious in their minds.

But there's a destination in mind and the hope of arriving at this destination and the things we're going to do when we get there helps them to not be as bored or for it to be as tedious. So there's duty.

And if all we know is there's duty, then it can become a burden. It's just something to do. I'm supposed to do this. I don't know why. Check off the boxes. But the promise says, oh, here's why. Here's where we're headed.

This is why we're doing this. If you only have the promise, though, then you don't have a sense of roadmap. So we're going somewhere. We don't know where. We're just going to drive until we get there.

Well, how do you know you've arrived? Well, I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a helpful illustration. So the duties are the roadmap. We're not free to just go wherever kind of we feel like going today and just kind of have a sentimental vague idea of I'm just here to love the Lord.

Well, but what would that look like? And what would sticking very close to him look like? If clinging is commanded and clinging to a certain person is commanded, then we really—who that person is and where he's walking, that would change everything.

You have to cling to him. So you're not commanded to say, let Jesus follow you closely, but rather lean upon him, cling to him. Yeah, good balance. So without the hope, we're paralyzed. I mean, I don't know about you, but when we see the sin that still remains within us and the old habits that seem to cling to us when we're trying to cling to Christ and when you see the sin of the world— now, maybe at age 15, that's not so clear, but at age 52, I mean, I feel like every day we live longer, the bitter, heartbreaking consequences of sin that God told us would be there, the death that he warned us about, you just see it.

It's like it's unveiled more and more in people you care about or reach out to. So without the promise of enduring and being kept by God while we persevere, I think we would just be paralyzed with the despair, and we would just sit down in self-pity and say, why try?

I have never seen in a person despair produce a faster pace. It always produces kind of a paralyzing, crippling impact. Yeah, so I think that's really helpful to hold them together like that, and when they are held together, and we don't pick one or the other.

I only focus on the promises. God's going to keep me. Nobody can snatch me out of his hands. But you ignore the duties, or you only focus on the duties, and you ignore the hope that there is in God's sovereign keeping.

Either one of those approaches is pretty dangerous.